Brewhouse & Kitchen - Cardiff — Restaurant in Pontcanna

Table booked in advance (11),1400hrs Sunday 20th March 2022, table. This is our second visit to your brew house and kitchen.

Great to see the place busy, particularly outside, all the staff were excellent throughout of visit, showing us to the table and in a short while took our drinks order. Shortly after this we ordered our food and was advised a 45 minute wait, not an issue for us, albeit it ended up being well over an hour.

Your beers and drinks we’re excellent.

The food was generally okay but it had its disappointments.

The 3 meat roast ,three of us had this….. pork utterly brilliant, beef good, chicken as dry as a bone, I mean really really dry, couldn’t eat it. Roast potatoes hard, I’m guessing these are frozen potatoes, quite disappointing as we all love roast potatoes. The vegetables were bland and hard.

1/2 chicken meal, sorry again the chicken was very very dry, onion rings cooked in burnt fat in our opinion.

Fish and chips, I know the fish is covered with a beer batter, but this was soggy and quite unpleasant. I made excuses to my dad, aged 86, that the very dark colour was the impact of the beer, he didn’t eat all his meal. Would suggest the fat it was cooked in was burnt, you could smell it. We were there for his birthday.

Spare ribs , simply not cooked enough should be falling off the bone normally.

Apple struddle, two of our party ordered this generally okay apart from the base of the dessert being so hard it was inedible. I ordered a different pudding for one of my guests because of it.

A main course dish ordered which was outstanding for a while arrived as cauliflower cheese but the order was a children chicken roast dinner. With an apology, the dish finally arrived 15 mins after the other dishes, the roast potatoes were hard and appeared to be frozen in the middle .

We could have raised these issues with the staff but given the food had taken a long time to arrive we didn’t want further delay. I was travelling to Worcester and my brother was travelling back to Waterford.

Our bill was £309.67 which included a £28.15 service charge and I was happy to pay the service charge given the staff were all hardworking and polite.

Given our experience it would seem unlikely, given the consensus amongst us , we would book a meal at your Brewhouse and kitchen again. We were there again to celebrate my dads birthday as we...

Brunch - catalogue of disasters. Arrived at 11.30 for a quick brunch. 1 other table occupied. Notes on all the tables saying, "it's ok to sit here till..." We choose a table that said free till 1.30. Immediately told by bar staff to move as they might arrive early. Little awkward but hey ho - but why not just make the notice say the table wasn't available at all? Explained that daughter was competing across the road and we needed to be out of here in half an hour. She needed to have eaten and be back in the stadium by 12.15. should be no problem given what we ordered, or so we thought... Ordered granola, eggs Florentine, coffee and water. Within 5 mins, told there was no granola. Fair enough, went for avocado on toast. We were the only table indoors and almost nobody outside. 25 minutes later (!!) Had to check in with the manager on our order. He said it was being plated up. 8 (!!) minutes after that I had to go to the kitchen to ask what was happening. Avocado was chopped, not mashed, on dry toast - certainly not appetising. No idea how long it had been sitting there for. Poached eggs were still being cooked. Eventually delivered almost 40 minutes after our order was registered. Daughter by now so tense she couldn't eat. Manager did refund a tenner from our bill of £14 - the cost of the food. However, he blamed the delay on problems with the hob. However, as we left, 2 girls were sitting with empty plates from a fired meal. Those girls weren't even seated when we ordered. Why not be honest and admit you forgot our order? The crowner? The reserved tables were for runners in the half marathon. The restaurant had reserved totally inappropriate high stool tables for runners whose legs were liable to cramping. Hopeless for them. They all went outside to sit, leaving several of those tables, we were moved...

I believe that post booking a meal for a large group, the pub has changed ownership.

I mix of that and the fact it was a very busy day due to the great weather, we didn't have the best experience. I'm guessing this may have been different if it wasn't so busy. Either way i will carry on.

Negatives -

First issue. All meals were booked in advance. On the day a particular dish had ran out. I know it was busy, but if you know you have a booked table of a large group. Why wouldn't you order more ingredients?

Serving time was slow. This must have been due to staff shortage. Or the fact it was fairly busy.

Very long waiting time ordering drinks at the bar. One customer started ranting that hes waited 45 mins for them to replace a barrel... They did rectify the wait but getting a member of staff to take an order at the table.

Disabled toilet & Womens toilet. I was informed that there was a lot of water on the floor of the womens toilet.. I popped in the disabled/baby changing toilet to change my sons nappy. The bin was overflowing with nappies. About 20 on the floor. THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN DEALT WITH THROUGHOUT THE DAY. NO EXCUSE.

One of our group didn't receive his meal (eventually did)

The batter on the fish was dark brown. very old/used oil used by the look of it.

My boiled chicken was tough & placed on top of my curry rather than in it to take on the curry flavors.

Positives:

Friendly staff

Looks nice there

The manager came to apologise and told us their chef had quit the day before

The didn't charge us for some of the meals & took 20% off the bill.

Overall across the group, the food was ok. Hurry up and...